Repercussions

College of William and Mary President Gene Nichol made news when he decided to remove a cross from the school’s chapel – a cross that had been there for decades – because he was “concerned” that the presence of a cross in a school chapel might be offensive to someone. Despite outcries, he’s held to the decision and refused to discuss it.

There are consequences to actions and President Nichols is now seeing the first of this set. Apparently, a donor to the school has put the brakes on a $12 million fund owing to the decision. Nichols calls this “a serious setback to the college.”

Be sure you let your students know which school programs are going to get dropped as a result of making sure someone could walk into a chapel and not see the cross that had been there since WWII, Mr. Nichols. I’m sure they’ll all understand.

MSM appears to notice fed money program benefitting illegals – way late.

I’m happy to see the program run by the Fed titled “Directo a Mexico” is finally getting some notice from the MSM. They’re a bit late. Michelle Malkin was talking about this back in October.

The program offers a cheap method of wiring money overseas. Read the story of all the head-shaking details.

It’s nearing Easter, so it’s time for the “debunk Christian religion” films

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed something that would be a bit odd were it not for the propensity of the media in this country to belittle Christianity. It seems that whenever major Christian holidays approach, there’s a little explosion of films and TV specials purporting to tell audiences all about the “truth” as regards the life of Jesus and the time in which he lived. This past Christmas I got to see many commercials about documentaries that promised to tell you all about how Jesus wasn’t really born when or where the Church says and how his family life was completely different than described, etc., etc. Last Easter it was the “Gospels of Judas.” (Note how often you hear about those allegedly earth-shattering documents today and you can get a sense of how serious they really were. Here’s a hint: not at all.)

So, Easter is coming up and that means there’s gotta be another one, this time claiming that Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven but rather is buried in location x,y,z. For this one they’re trotting out the ossuary schtick again. Last time, it was an ossuary labeled “James, brother of Jesus.” This time they’ve found one they are translating as “Judah, son of Jesus.” Buried with this one were other remains, that of a man and woman, and they’ve run DNA analysis that apparently shows the woman contained within had no familial connection with the man, this indicating that they were likely a married couple. Ed Morrissey over at CQ hits the deficiency of reasoning in this one dead on:

The DNA analysis, which has been trumpeted without much explanation, does not identify the Jesus of the ossuary as the same Jesus in the Bible. All it does is show that the bones in a tomb that the researchers speculate belonged to Mary Magdelene have no familial relation to the bones in the Jesus ossuary. That is how the archeologists assumed that the two in this crypt were married, and that the Judah ben-Jesus of the ossuary had to be their offspring.

The assumption that any reference at all from that time period to the name Jesus must be a reference to the biblical Son of God is completely baseless and yet documentaries like these just accept it as graven in stone fact. As Captain Ed points out, above, they’re also assuming a lot about the familial relations of the remains in the tomb, too. Unless they’ve done DNA testing on all 3 occupants and confirmed that not only are the man and woman not directly related (they apparently have done this) but that the remains of Judah show him to be descended from the other 2, then you can’t conclude a married state between the man and woman. Perhaps they’ve done this but the report doesn’t mention it.

I suppose I’d give more credit for the archaeological work were it not such a blatant grab at sensationalism – oooo, Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven and we’ve got the proof!! – and timed to coincide with just exactly the religious observance of Easter. Oh, I’m sure it’ll make money and Hollywood will love it. It’s just galling that on top of all this we get to hear patronizing comments about how they really respect all religions.

Yeah. Except those Christians.

Cisco, Apple reach agreement over trademark infringement

Cisco and Apple have worked out an agreement over the iPhone trademark infringement action I wrote about last month. Both companies are going to use the trademark:

Cisco® and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.

We’ll have to wait and see what interoperability means in this context.

Wintery mix, again

It was 45 days ago, or so, that I was out in my front yard wearing a golf shirt and jeans and kicking a soccer ball around with my daughter. The temperature was in the low 70′s and this was in the first few days of January. We all remarked how the winter, so far, had been extremely mild.

The last couple of weeks has handled that notion pretty quickly. Recalling the hours of trying to bust up the ice on my driveway a bit over a week ago and looking outside at the snow/sleet mixture falling at this very moment another thought has occurred.

Man, if this global warming crap keeps up, I’m gonna have to buy a snow blower.

Technorati Tags: Loudoun County, snow, global warming

Exactly when would expressing love for Jesus be anti-semitic?

The title of the news story this morning is “Virginia Principal: Students’ Jesus Chants Are Anti-Semitic” and if there’s a headline that’ll grab a Christian’s attention on a Sunday morning faster, I’ve not seen it. I went into that story already thinking about overly-PC school officials. The details, however…

A Catholic school principal has organized sensitivity training for students who shouted “We love Jesus” during a basketball game against a school with Jewish students.

The word “Jew” also was painted on a gym wall behind the seats of Bishop Sullivan Catholic High School students attending the Feb. 2 game at Norfolk Academy, said Dennis W. Price, principal of the Virginia Beach school.

Price who also watched the game, said the rivals exchanged chants, “Then, at some point, our students were chanting, ‘We love Jesus.”‘

“It was obviously in reference to the Jewish population of Norfolk Academy; that’s the only way you can take that,” he added.

The timing, here, is critical. This wasn’t a group of students bursting into a spontaneous expression of love for Christ. They queued this up as the next salvo in a volley of competitive chanting. At our local high school’s season finale (my next door neighbor’s kid is on the team) I observed the back-and-forth chanting of the 2 student bodies myself. We did similar things back in high school – if memory serves – but the chants are generally aimed at something related to the school’s sports prowess. On occasion, a chant will aim at some general characteristic of the opposing school. And that’s exactly what this Catholic school’s students were trying to do when they pulled this stunt.

Let’s be clear: they were invoking Jesus as an insult to hurl at an opposing school. During a basketball game.

I have real heartburn about “sensitivity training” because most of those that I’ve been forced to attend amount to little more than a directive to treat certain groups of people with kid gloves because their frail little egos can’t handle the kind of daily commentary I’m expected to ignore. In this case, however, I’ve gotta go with the Principal. These kids need to understand what they did wasn’t acceptable for a couple of reasons. First, there’s no call to try to hold some Jewish high school students responsible for the actions of the Pharisees 2 millenia ago. Second, if you’re going to say you love Jesus do it because you love Jesus. Don’t use it as a prop in a local sporting event.

Technorati Tags: religion, politics, Virginia

Local primaries, the LCRC and where does one go from here?

In catching up with my reading from my absence this week, I popped over to Too Conservative for their take on the local political scene and found this post on the Loudoun County Republican Committee (a.k.a. the LCRC.) TC contributor Loudoun Insider notes that the LCRC has cancelled a number of meetings lately, including February’s. From that post:

The LCRC continues to bungle meetings.  The last official committee meeting was November 27, 2006.  December’s meeting was cancelled due to the holidays.  The January meeting was a total fiasco, with the wrong call mailed, a half-hearted attempt made to reschedule, a declaration made that we couldn’t reschedule due to Frank Wolf speaking, then a meeting with no Frank Wolf and the infamous Dale Polen Myers one-sided screamfest at Lori Waters.

Now comes the news from the committee “leadership” that the February meeting must be cancelled so that we don’t interfere with the Rudy Giuliani dinner in Tysons Corner.

In the comments to the post a user under the moniker “Not Mark Tate” brings up the notion that the LCRC will be in violation of its party plan if it fails to meet in February since the plan requires 1 meeting every 3 months. He’s correct, unless the January meeting – which L.I. correctly notes was bungled by mailing the wrong call – counts as a meeting. From the sounds of things, there’s a good argument that it doesn’t since members were notified of a meeting with the incorrect information and might have missed the “real” meeting as a result. If the January meeting doesn’t count, then the commenter over on TC is right: If there’s no meeting in February, then the 3 month period of December, January, and February would constitute a violation of the party plan.

So, what if that’s what happens? The suggestion has been made that the State Party might decide to dissolve the current LCRC and call for a mass meeting to re-form it.

To say there’s a lot of bad blood in the county Republicans’ relations is an understatement. I’ve written about various issues dealing with the LCRC in the past and the perennial infighting and the obnoxious, intolerant atmosphere generated by the tight little knot of party power brokers finally drove me away from participating. Last year’s devastating losses at the polls during the special elections (to say nothing of the losses the previous November) had given me hope that the party’s elite would wake up and realize they’re not appealing to the voting public of the county. The follow-up letter from then-Senate candidate Mick Staton dashed those hopes very efficiently and I realized immediately that the tone-deafness in the LCRC was only going to get worse, not better.

Folks over at TC are talking in very hopeful terms of the LCRC being dissolved and reformed. I’m curious about how that would change anything. It might give those who are not blessed by the current power elite the chance to get in there and exert control, but will those who are calling for change actually serve? I mean, I wonder how many of those who are applauding the chance to do the LCRC over will run for a party office? (ed: Would I? Perhaps. Let’s just say I’m not opposed to the idea.)

One of the big issues people are continually bringing up that they hate, hate, hate about the current LCRC is the reliance on a convention to choose candidates rather than a primary. I need those people to explain something: in a State where voters are not required to register for a party, how would they propose to restrict the voting in a primary only to party members? This isn’t a case where all citizens have a right to vote. They do, of course, but only in general elections where the leadership of the locality, state, and nation are concerned. Political parties are not public entities. They are private ones; affiliations of private citizens who associate freely based upon their common political views and goals. Decisions of private entities are not subject to public votes and are, rightly, to be decided only by their membership. So how can you demand an open primary and force a private entity to accept the outcome of a vote where the voters’ membership in the party is not confirmable?

I’m not opposed to primaries, I just want to know how the people advocating this method are proposing such a thing be done and still allow party business to be conducted only by party members.

Technorati Tags: Virginia politics, Loudoun County

Hush money?

Cartoonist Paul Nowak hits it out of the park with this one.

Where do we send the check?

Candidate for Best Line Ever

Bwah-hah-hah-ha-ha-HAAAAA!!!!

Comcast troubles with Motorola DVR’s

Here in eastern Loudoun County, our cable service used to be Adelphia. Adelphia sold their holdings out here to Comcast, which has since won the cable franchise from the Loudoun County government. As a result, Comcast picked up a bunch of former Adelphia customers equipped with the Adelphia gear that had been installed. In this house, that includes the Motorola DCT6412 III cable box with integrated DVR.

I’ll be the first to speak out about Adelphia’s shortcomings as a cable provider so I wasn’t overly upset when I found they were selling to Comcast. Comcast has an internet service that was interesting, as well, since it’s speed is significantly higher than the Verizon DSL I’m on now. So, I was OK when I heard Comcast was taking over. I understand the actual takeover has occurred and the latest cable bill I received in the mail has their logo on it.

Over the past couple of days – I don’t know when, precisely – the DVR in this cable box died spectacularly. I had a number of shows I had set up to record during my recent absence and sat down last night to view one of them. Not only was it not there, there was nothing on the list of recorded shows at all. I called Comcast and was informed that, “yeah, there’s a problem with the Motorola box’s DVR.”

And that’s the sum total of assistance I got from Comcast.

Gee, we’re sorry, but it’s a complete coincidence that your box and all those other ones that have failed have died inside 60 days of Comcast taking over your network. Yeah, we know we’re charging you monthly for the DVR service and you can’t use it. No, we don’t know when it’ll get fixed. You just have to keep checking in.

Interesting how a quick search of the net hasn’t yielded mass numbers of Motorola customers experiencing problems with their Motorola boxes. Only the Comcast users are complaining about them. Hmmm. With such a widespread failure of a manufacturer’s product, I’d expect to hear about it from everywhere. Only on Comcast’s network. In network troubleshooting, we call that a correlating event.

The part about it that irritates me the most is the attitude from the “customer service” rep that they weren’t going to do anything at all about actually providing the service they are charging me for, monthly. We all just supposed to sit and wait and one day – maybe – someone, somewhere will do something about it. If we’re lucky.

Until then, just keep paying the bill, bub.

This is the kind of customer satisfaction killer that pushes people to other vendors. Satellite TV ain’t that bad that I’m not considering it.

Technorati Tags: Comcast, Motorola DVR, DCT6412